BALTIMORE — Maryland will receive $125 million in federal funding for the Howard Street Tunnel project — significantly less than the state and CSX Transportation had sought, but enough to start working on the project.
The Baltimore Sun reports that the federal funds are more than $100 million below the figure sought by the state and railroad to increase clearances in the tunnel under Baltimore, as well as at 22 bridges between Baltimore and Philadelphia, to allow for double-stack container operation. The entire project is estimated to cost $466 million; Maryland and CSX had sought $228 million and pledged to cover the rest with $147 million from the state and $91 million from the railroad. There was no immediate word on how the state and CSX planned to make up the $103 million shortfall.
Still, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued a statement celebrating the award: “This grant will help us break a coast-wide bottleneck, further bolstering our economic success at the Port of Baltimore and across the state.”
The project’s lengthy history saw the railroad withdraw from the planning process for the project in 2019 [See “Maryland wants explanation for CSX Howard Street Tunnel decision,” Trains News Wire, Nov. 2, 2017], only to rejoin the effort a year later [see “CSX Transportation commits to Baltimore tunnel clearance project,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 14, 2018.]
As a former Baltimore resident, I can tell you that the Howard Street Tunnel prevents double stacks from reaching the vast majority of the Port of Baltimore via CSX, hence partly cutting CSX out of the traffic and giving i to NS. Agreed, for the benefit of the port and CSX, this should have been done a long time ago…then move on to those bridges.
As far as I can tell from the CSX Intermodal schedule web page, only one pair of trains, Q031 (sb) and Q032 (nb), provide COFC & TOFC service between North Bergen, NJ / Baltimore / Philly and Jacksonville / Tampa / Miami. I’ve seen Q032 multiple times on the Ashland, VA live rail cam and it is a lengthy single stack / trailer train often running with DPU power. IMO, if CSX were really gung-ho re: clearing the Baltimore – Philly mainline stretch for double stacks, CSX would already be operating a 2nd pair of single stack trains in the East Coast lane. And the same might be true for Chicago-Baltimore Q137 (wb) and Q138 (eb) single stack trains. Net: there are only 4 CSX COFC/TOFC trains serving Baltimore: 2 running east-west and 2 running north-south (which also service Philly & NJ).
https://shipcsx.com/pub_sx_mainpagepublic_jct/sx.shipcsxpublic/Main?module_url=/../pub_sx_ischedulepublic_jct/sx.ischedulepublic/ScheduleLanding.evt
Maybe they should have called it the Howard Street Tunnel and Interchange project.
The Feds would have happy to drop billions on them.
Right, like that’s going to happen… ??
Just a wild idea but; perhaps CSX could postpone additional share repurchases and increase their capital expenditure for this project.
Traveling from San Francisco up the coast to Seattle, and separate trips from Seattle to Vancouver, I witnessed a parade of double stack trains from UP and BNSF. There’s no reason CSX can’t enjoy such traffic if they get this damn project completed. This should have been done as soon as they got their share of Conrail. Get er done and get some trucks off I-95.